A "compulsively readable" account of the collapse of Europe's last Communist regime and the dramatic events that followed ( Los Angeles Review of Books).In the early 1990s, Albania, arguably Europe's most closed and repressive state, began a startling transition out of forty years of self-imposed Communist isolation. Albanians who were not allowed to practice religion, travel abroad, wear jeans, or read "decadent" Western literature began to devour the out...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.“Assiduously researched, compulsively readable.” — LA Review of Books“A richly woven work of narrative nonfiction.” — The Spectator“An intimate portrait of the country.” — Foreign AffairsIn the early 1990s, Europe’s most closed and repressive state began a startling transformation. After forty years of Communist isolation, Albanians who had been banned from pract...

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award: The story of how a Catholic priest uncovered the truth behind the murder of more than a million Ukrainian Jews.Father Patrick Desbois documents the daunting task of identifying and examining all the sites where Jews were exterminated by Nazi mobile units in Ukraine in WWII. Using innovative methodology, interviews, and ballistic evidence, he has determined the location of many mass gravesites with the goal of providing prope...

The searing accounts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgeniia Ginsberg and Varlam Shalamov opened the world's eyes to the terrors of the Soviet Gulag. But not until now has there been a memoir of life inside the camps written from the perspective of an actual employee of the Secret police. In this riveting memoir, superbly translated by Deborah Kaple, Fyodor Mochulsky describes being sent to work as a boss at the forced labor camp of Pechorlag in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle. On...

The book contains:A short ethnographic note depicting some traditions of Ukrainian Zaporozhian Cossacks written down around 1843.Preface to an unpublished edition of "Kobzar,” the publication of which was prevented by Shevchenko's arrest in 1847.A short recollection about Taras Shevchenko time as a student in Petersburg Academy of Arts and his friendship with the fellow student Vasily Shternberg.A short autobiography of Taras Shevchenko, written in the third per...

The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv reveals the local and transnational forces behind the twentieth-century transformation of Lviv into a Soviet and Ukrainian urban center. Lviv's twentieth-century history was marked by violence, population changes, and fundamental transformation ethnically, linguistically, and in terms of its residents' self-perception. Against this background, Tarik Cyril Amar explains a striking paradox: Soviet rule, which came to Lv...

The Routledge Companion to Central and Eastern Europe since 1919 is a compact and comprehensive reference guide to the area, from the Treaty of Versailles to the present day. With particular focus on the early nationalist and subsequent fascist and communist periods, Adrian Webb provides an essential guide to the events, people and ideas which have shaped, and continue to shape, central and eastern Europe since the re-ordering of Europe at the end of the First World War.Co...

***As heard on NPR’s All Things Considered*“Utterly original.” —The New York Times Book Review“Mixing bold journalism with bolder allegories, Mr. Szabłowski teaches us with witty persistence that we must desire freedom rather than simply expect it.” —Timothy Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny and The Road to UnfreedomAn incisive, humorous, and heartbreaking account of people in formerly Communist coun...

Chris Flaherty and Bruno Mugnai in this second volume of the ‘Lange Türkenkrieg’ examines in deep eastern European warfare and its implications in the global debate on infantry firepower, cavalry tactics and engineering techniques in this period. Covering relatively unknown corps and military specialities some topics such as the organization of the Romanian princedoms’ military, are discussed here for the first time, as well as fully detailed plates illustrating soldiers and militiamen in ...

In Beau Monde on Empire’s Edge, Mayhill C. Fowler tells the story of the rise and fall of a group of men who created culture both Soviet and Ukrainian. This collective biography showcases new aspects of the politics of cultural production in the Soviet Union by focusing on theater and on the multi-ethnic borderlands. Unlike their contemporaries in Moscow or Leningrad, these artists from the regions have been all but forgotten despite the quality of their art. Beau Monde r...

A sweeping yet intimate narrative about the last hundred years of turbulent European history, as seen through one of Mitteleuropa’s greatest houses—and the lives of its occupantsWhen Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten h...

Fondata nel 1201 come avamposto cristiano contro le popolazioni pagane, membro della Lega anseatica, seconda capitale del Regno di Svezia poi inglobata nell'Impero russo all'inizio del 18° secolo, Riga è una città dalla storia ricca e secolare, eppure ancora poco conosciuta. Tra ricordi personali, episodi storici e reminiscenze letterarie, l'autore restituisce la magia di una città crocevia tra Russia, Europa Occidentale e Scandinavia che, dopo il declino conosciuto in epoca sovietica, si ...